The Countess de Charny
A crown, a marriage, and a revolution that will not be stopped.
France, 1791–1793. As the Revolution hardens into something no one can any longer control, Andrée de Taverney — now the Countess de Charny — finds her fate bound ever more tightly to that of the royal family she serves. Dumas carries his sweeping chronicle of the fall of the French monarchy to its grimmest chapter, following the royal family's failed flight, their imprisonment, and the trial and execution of Louis XVI, as the world Andrée and the queen once knew is dismantled piece by piece.
The Series Reaches Its Reckoning
By the time Dumas reached this fourth novel, his fictional Marie Antoinette cycle had spanned more than two decades of French history, and here it collides fully with the darkest years of the Revolution. Andrée de Taverney, who first appeared as a young girl at court in Joseph Balsamo, is now the Countess de Charny, her personal story of love and duty inseparable from the crumbling fate of the monarchy she serves.
The novel's English title and subtitle — often rendered as The Countess of Charny; or, The Execution of King Louis XVI — makes its destination clear from the outset. Dumas follows the royal family's disastrous attempted flight to Varennes, their imprisonment, and the Assembly's fateful trial of the king, giving fiction's most human scale to events that changed the shape of Europe.
An Edition Built for Speed
As with the two novels before it in this series, the edition presented here is a popular nineteenth-century English condensation, running thirty-two chapters. It was, for generations of English-language readers, the standard way to follow Andrée, Charny, and the royal family through the Revolution's most consequential year, and it keeps Dumas's narrative pace brisk even as the history it depicts grows steadily grimmer.
Real History, Full Stop
Unlike the earlier novels in the cycle, where invented characters largely drive events, this installment increasingly lets documented history set the pace: the National Assembly, the flight to Varennes, the storming of the Tuileries, and finally the trial and execution of Louis XVI on January 21, 1793. Dumas's fictional characters become witnesses, in effect, to a history that no longer bends to anyone's invention — a fitting final act for a series that began, four novels earlier, with a mysterious magician's plot to reshape France.
First Published
Serialized 1853–1855, as Dumas's Marie Antoinette cycle reaches its climax.
Setting
Paris and Varennes, 1791–1793, ending with the execution of Louis XVI.
Genre
Historical tragedy, closely following the documented fall of the monarchy.
Related Work
The Chevalier de Maison-Rouge, set in the same Revolutionary Paris, shortly after.